The sun had already begun its descent by the time the thunderstruck cadets made their silent ways back down the mountain. The training field had by and large emptied for the day, save for the solitary figure in a long, leather coat and broad, flat-brimmed hat leaning against the lonely oak. He said nothing upon their arrival, instead choosing to cast his gunmetal grey eyes over their stiff and bedraggled forms in oppressive silence.

“… Time’s up,” Graves said, his gravelly baritones sounding neither gleeful nor even satisfied. It was merely hard, hard and flat like a slab of iron.

“Sorry, sir,” Boulder answered as he threw a slow, rough salute with joints that felt like they’d rusted over. “Our descent was slow.”

“So it would seem.”

Silence fell again as the cadets stood stone still, not even daring to lift their eyes to meet the marshal’s unyielding gaze. How could they? When the day had started, they'd touted themselves as the Academy's elite, the four cardinals who would lead that year of graduates to service and glory. Now, covered with dirt and twigs before the marshal who stood as fresh as the moment they'd met, it was only at that moment they realized the full depths of their own hubris.

“... Sir,” Spellbound called out, his voice deflated as it came from behind his cracked glasses. “What happens now?”

“Now?” Graves repeated. “Now you go home. You’re done.”

“Sir?” the twice-stunned Comet intoned. “What do you mean, ‘done’?”

“Done being marshals, of course,” Graves answered as if it were the most obvious conclusion in the world. “From what I saw today, none of you are even fit to polish the badge, let alone wear it. You were absolutely pathetic.”

The words were delivered with no heat or malice, yet they stung worse than the flaying barbs of a scourge. For four who’d stood at the pinnacle for so long, those few words cut deeper than any blade could ever match.

“With all-due respect sir, that’s completely unfair,” Firefox called out with a surprising amount of heat in her fatigued voice. Whether that heat was affected for impact or stemmed from genuine emotion, probably not even she could say, but it was there in every word she spoke.

“Really?” Graves intoned as steely eyes glinted beneath an arched brow. “Explain.”

“Sir,” the cadet continued, “I get that a lot's expected of the marshals, but we're still just cadets facing an experienced veteran. To expect us to beat you in simulated combat with no advanced warning in order to prove ourselves is basically impossible.”

“… Comet.”

“Yes sir!” the cadet called out in half-startled surprise as Graves named him.

“Remind me,” the marshal continued. “What was your mission?”

“Sir, it was to defeat you and retrieve your marshal’s badge, sir.”

“Was it? Was it really?”

Comet opened his mouth to respond, but paused as the question caught his tongue. The sandy-haired soldier looked to his fellow cadets, who in turn looked to Spellbound as he retrieved the original letter and read it again.

“ ‘Get my badge, however you can,’ ” the young mage carefully read as clear confusion spread across the four. What was the question? Obviously, if you wanted to relieve a marshal of his badge when he didn't want to give it, you had to somehow incapacitate him and take it by force, right?

… Right?

With the snap of a bullwhip, Graves spun and delivered a hammer-fist blow to the lonely oak that sent a shivering rattle to the very top of its aged branches. It was from one of those aged branches that – amongst the cascade of leaves and loose twigs – a small, silver disk fell down into the marshal’s waiting palm.

It was too early in the season for crickets to be chirping, but it they must have gotten a head start as four sets of flabbergasted eyes locked onto the silver emblem.

“You… left it behind?” Boulder gaped, for the very first time daring to look into the marshal’s eyes as confusion overpowered his apprehension.

“I did,” Graves nodded as he carefully affixed the winged-shield back onto the inside of his coat. “It was a two-part test, and you lot managed to fail both spectacularly.”

“Two part?” Comet asked, now more bewildered than ever. “What do you mean?”

“First, to see if you had an ounce of brains between you lot,” the marshal explained, the weariness in his voice to match a mother who’d explained that yes, touching a lit stove would be bad to the same child three and a half dozen times. “A simple call out to the badge’s magic would have instantly told you where it was. Should’ve taken you all of ten seconds, but you screwed up. Know why?”

Four working brains plus four connected mouths equaled zero proffered answers. It’s hard to come up with a good answer to justify your actions when the question makes it clear you were already as thick as a badly-baked pie crust.

“It’s because you’re idiots,” Graves sighed, the pity in his voice twice as painful as any amount of scorn could match. “ I gave you a golden opportunity to actually win if you’d used your brains for half a second, but no, you were so emotional, so wrapped up in the idea of taking me down a peg that you rushed right in like flies to a seven day carcass. You had a chance and you blew it, not for lack of skill, but because of sheer, unbridled stupidity.”

The marshal fell silent as he gave the cadets a moment to stew in their own mortification. Fabulous a chef as he was, it took mere seconds for their cheeks to reach a crimson that would match any marshal’s cloak.

“… Sir,” Comet said as what little confidence he had evaporated like water on a sun-baked rock. “If that was the first test, then… what was the second?”

“The second test,” Graves said with a voice grown suddenly a shade softer, “is even barring all of that, would you succeed. You didn’t.”

…. Wait, what?

“I… don’t think I quite follow, sir,” Spellbound hesitantly stepped. “Are you saying that we fail at being marshals... because we failed?”

Graves nodded.

“Tell me,” he said. “What is a marshal?”

“Sir,” Spellbound began, “a marshal is a special division of the Equestrian military, designed–”

“Oh, shut up,” Graves snapped as for the first time, his temper flared and grey eyes flashed like summer lightning. “I’m not asking you to recite textbook drivel, I’m asking you to answer a bloody simple question. What. Is. A. Marshal?”

Spellbound worked his jaw for a response. They all did. But none of them could voice a response to that bloody simple question.

“… Incredible,” Graves gaped in dismay. “You want to be marshals and you don’t even know what they do?”

Once more, all he was met with was silence.

“… A marshal,” Graves sighed, sounding as if he’d lost all faith in this generation, “is someone who gets the job done. We get an order, we deliver, no questions asked.”

“…”

“… That’s it?” Firefox blinked, uncertain. “That’s all?”

“You seem surprised.”

“It’s, just…” The bronze-haired cadet swallowed and continued. “Isn’t that everyone? I mean, everyone does their job, right?”

“They do,” Graves nodded slowly as the gravel in his tones now took on the ominous tones of an approaching avalanche. “And what happens when they don’t?”

When no answer came, he continued, a glacier in his slow, frosty force.

“If others fail, they fix it. Maybe you get some extra help, maybe you burn the midnight oil, but more often than not, there’s a safety net to make sure it works out. Marshals? We get one shot because we are that net. We get the jobs where failure is no longer an option. Royal guards screw up? Ten people die and they call in the marshals. The marshals screw up? That ten grow to a hundred, a thousand, maybe more, because after us, there’s nothing left. That’s why when we get a job, we get it done.”

“But you don’t get that do you?” he continued, the soft, rumbling tones that should have been comforting instead sending a chill to their blood. “I gave you orders, even gave you a chance, and you went about it like dandies at a Sunday picnic. Then, you actually had the nerve to whine that it was too hard, that it was impossible after you went and bucked it all up to kingdom come. Well guess what? Impossible is what we do. If the brass tells a marshal to go to hell and kick the devil’s ass, we ask what boots to wear and how far up they want the leather. We get the impossible not because we’re the best or brightest, but because we make it happen whatever it costs. Too hard? Cry me a bucking river and jump in. If you’re too weak to carry the weight, then piss off, because when lives are on the line, anything except success is just an excuse. You wanna join the marshals? Get. The job. Done.”

…

…

…

…

Melodramatic, right? All that talk about death and failure and impossibility? One would think. But the silence from the four cadets told a different story, because one look into those iron-grey eyes revealed that those words held nothing but cold, unyielding truth. This wasn’t a fancy pep talk or some haughty, arrogant speech. This was a soldier from the field sharing a very grim reality.

“… If you bunch aren’t too stupid to get the picture,” Graves rumbled, looking to each one in turn where not one of dared to meet his heavy, silver gaze, “then I suggest you head back and think about–”

“Yoohoo! Darling!”

… Hah?

Four sets of very confused eyes look towards the unexpected sound. A chariot rumbled its way down the field under the deft hands of a skilled officer as he brought someone in the space beside. That someone, it turns out, was an absolutely stunning young woman in a pristine white chesterfield with a fur-trimmed urshanka perched atop a head of immaculate, violet curls. From her perch atop the chariot, the mysterious stranger smiled with the radiance of the sun as she eagerly waved to… the marshal?!

“There you are, dear,” the beautiful lady called as she elegantly descended from the chariot and – to their slack-jawed surprise – actually stepped up and planted a kiss onto the stony soldier’s lips. “My appointment with Fleur finished a little early, so I went shopping and ran into Princess Cadance, who asked if we were free for dinner?”

“Sounds nice, Rarity,” Graves nodded as he pressed a surprisingly gentle finger to her lips. “But can it wait? I’m sort of in the middle of something.”

“Yes, Ironside told me about that,” the aforementioned Rarity nodded as she turned to the quartet. “You’ve been in charge of their lessons for the day?”

“Yeah,” Graves nodded yet again.

“I assume you gave them some sort of test?”

“Of course.”

“They didn’t pass.”

“Not even close.”

“You told them why?”

“Naturally.”

“And now they’re absolutely mortified at the prospect of ever attempting to even set foot amongst the marshals for the rest of their natural born lives?” At this, Graves turned his eyes towards the group and gave them an appraising look.

“... Yup.”

“Well that certainly won’t do,” the lovely newcomer said with pursed lips. “You have to consider they're little more than children, after all." Now, it was rather strange seeing a woman of their same approximate age address them as children, but given the marshal’s spirited tongue lashing, it almost seemed appropriate.

“It’s simply not fair to expect them to live up to your standards,” Rarity continued, “especially if you don’t give them reasoning to make it bearable.”

“Bearable?” a star struck Comet repeated. The only sort of bearing that came to mind with the marshal was of the polar or possibly grizzly mauling variety.

“Indeed,” Rarity nodded. “If I’m correct, after your failure, Graves must have said something along the lines of fulfilling duty in all situations with a willingness to pay any cost, regardless of how difficult or unreasonable the task might be?”

Luna have mercy, was this lady psychic?

“And that is all true, every last bit of it,” she smiled. “But what he didn’t tell you, I’m sure, is that everything he said is only because he cares.”

“… What?!”

It was an egregious breach of military discipline, having cadets so brazenly shouting like that, but given the circumstances, the outburst of the four could probably be overlooked.

“Indeed,” Rarity said as she turned to the marshal with, as impossible as it may sound, a look of… endearment. Here was a man who’d thoroughly cowed the four elite cadets of the nation’s most august military academy like a wolf before sheep, and she looked at him as if he were a fluffy, little bunny rabbit!

“You see,” she continued, “Graves here demands absolute excellence because he cares far too much about others to see them hurt. That’s why he puts such high barriers in place. Not only is he protecting the people by ensuring their reliance on the marshals is well founded, it seems people like you need the help just as well.”

“People like us?” Boulder gaped. “You mean that everything today was his way of protecting us?”

“But of course,” Rarity intoned, looking quite confused at having to answer such an obvious question. “From his dour expression earlier, I can only assumed that you failed your exams in as fantastic a way as he could ever have imagined?”

Okay, it was official. Definitely psychic.

“There, you see?” the young beauty huffed. “You know you’ll be expected to do dangerous work, yet from your lackadaisity, that doesn’t seem to have sunk in at all! Better that Graves here humbled you and taught you the values of care and consideration than for to go and get yourself killed.”

The blank looks she got were clear indication that such a thought had never even entered the recesses of their minds. At least, not recently. Years of being hailed as the best and even prodigies tended to help you forget your own flaws.

“It seems you lot really do have a lot of learning to do,” Rarity sighed. “Well, here’s how it works. Being a marshal is difficult and often requires a very high price be paid. Graves pays that price not because he’s better than everyone else, but because he cares too much to do otherwise. He sacrifices himself when others can’t and does what others won’t to keep those other people safe. Thankless? Possibly. Painful? Definitely. But if you wish to be a marshal like him, you have to, and I mean have to have the welfare of others first and foremost in your minds. That’s the only way you’ll ever be able to pay the price that’s needed.”

Four pairs of stunned eyes turned from Rarity to Graves, sure that they’d see a laugh or scoff, something to render her words invalid. It was impossible, right? I mean, Rarity 's explanation was about as sensical as hearing that the dragon razing your crops was doing it for research on how to cure the common cold There was no way that this merciless warrior, this harbinger of thundering death, could be so considerate.

However, if there was anything they’d learn over the course of this long and painful day, it was to recognize truth in the marshal’s eyes.

“Didn’t need to go that far,” Graves snorted. They knew it was impossible, the marshal doing anything even close to blushing, but at this point, they were willing to believe anything. “These fool cadets are namby pamby enough without you painting the marshals like a group of do-gooder saints.”

“But dear,” Rarity laughed, “isn’t it that sort of selfless, do-gooder sainthood what made me fall for you in the first place?”

“Was it now?” he intoned with a roll of his silver eyes. “I was sure it was my sparkling wit.”

“That too,” she giggled. “Oh, and let’s not forget your butt. You do have a very cute butt.”

It was official. Discord was on the loose and messing with reality. How else would you explain a legendary marshal actually having his bottom pinched by a beautiful Canterlot socialite? At least, they assumed that. She had grace and poise enough to do tea with the Queen of Prance, but that wasn't the point. She'd touched the butt. She'd touched the butt!

“Well, I should get going,” Rarity smiled as she waved the charioteer over once more. “I promised Cadance that I’d help her pick out some things for the nursery before we dined. Will you be along soon?”

“In a bit,” Graves nodded. “Just have to finish off here.”

“Lovely,” Rarity beamed as she leaned up to kiss him once more. “I’ll let them know and come pick you up in a bit. Au revoir!”

And just like a pretty little hurricane, Rarity was back on the chariot and gone from sight.

“... Now then,” Graves growled, his typical gravelly tones returning without a beat. “If you bunch aren’t too stupid to get the picture, then I suggest–”

“Hold on a second!” Comet interrupted as something clearly beyond common sense dictated his actions. “Who in the name of the seven stars was that?!”

“Rarity, obviously,” Graves intoned. “I said it already.”

“I know that,” Comet continued. “What I meant was, who is she? I mean, are you and her… like… you know?”

The marshal’s weary gaze laid on the handsome cadet like a heavy snowfall.

“I already think you’re an idiot,” he said with almost painful despair. “Please don’t prove that you're a hopeless idiot.”

“Sir,” Firefox quickly interjected. “How on earth did you manage to get yourself such a fine lady?”

“Why do you care?” Boulder asked with a quizzical eyebrow arched. “Does your door swing the other way?”

“Not at all,” Firefox shrugged, “but come on, just look at her. I’m straight as they come, but nobody’s that straight.” Boulder nodded in complete understanding.

“Anyway,” Spellbound joined in, adjusting glasses over a composed, if flushed face. “I think we’d all like to know – that is, with your permission, sir – how you and that lovely lady actually became an item.”

Graves looked to the four, their eyes now united through the earnest intent at the most unexpected of topics: love. For a moment, the marshal paused as he considered how to answer their question. And then, rising like the old gods from the deep, the wickedest, most deliciously evil smile came to his face.

“Sorry," he grinned. "Marshal secret.”

The Journey of Graves will continue in the next story: Marshmallows and Cotton Candy.